I remember, as a tweenager, hanging out in the girls washroom with our teen mags and our makeup palettes trying out the looks that apparently suited our eye colours.
We usually ended up looking like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show.

Eventually, once we reached high school, this transitioned to the hot 90’s look.

I remember MANY girls who lined their lips with brown or black liner, what were we they thinking?!

Flash forward 25 years, and I’m so happy that I established a good skin care regime back in my late teens! And me going through a Make-Up Artistry course helped as well. I don’t look nearly as old as I could if I hadn’t cleansed and moisturized twice a day.
Pre-kids, I had WAY more time to give myself mini facials, tweeze my eyebrows, trim my “lady stache” and dig out those unsightly blackheads. Fortunately, I have a skin care specialist as one of my girlfriends!Keeley Saunders is an Independent Beauty Consultant with Mary Kay Canada.
Recently she invited me over for a facial and make-up application for her #50faces30days promotion.
Of course I showed up with a full face of make-up and dreaded not using my regular gear to chisel through my goalie mask.
First Keeley had me use the eye make-up remover, which easily removed my mascara without leaving me with raccoon eyes.

Then she had me use the 3-in-1 Cleanser, Toner and Exfoliator all in one. Using the super cool Skinvigorate brush, I scrub-a-dub dubbed away, followed by Microdermabrasion 2 Step Refine and Replenish. My face was left smooth and refreshed. I finished up with the Age a Fighting Moisturizer, because I will continue to fight my age until the day I die.
Once I had a fresh palette to work with, I summoned my inner Bob Ross and began to create my masterpiece.

I am a huge fan of trying new skin care products and playing around with different looks that can be created with cosmetics. It makes Mom’s Nights Out so much more fun, when you try out the dramatic look that you’ve been mastering for the last month.Keeley has generously provided a complimentary facial treatment to one lucky Raincity Parent reader and you’ll get to invite up to 3 of your friends to
join you. Plus you’ll get a $50 shopping spree to be used at your appointment!
Please enter via the Rafflecopter link below. This giveaway runs from March 20th, 2014 – March 30th, 2014.a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you’d like more information about Mary Kay products or would like to contact Keeley, please visit her Facebook Page.

Being a SAHM, I am ALWAYS cleaning up messes. From the kids spilling everything EVERYWHERE, handprints all over the mirrored doors and windows, cooking spills and splatters, dishes, piles of endless laundry, and the dreaded…BATHROOM (dun dun dunnnn).

I grew up with cleaners like Fantastik, Windex, Tilex, Toilet Duck, Lysol and Comet. Laundry was done with powdered soap like Ivory Snow, Tide or Sunlight, and dishes were scrubbed with Palmolive or Sunlight. Now there are countless brands that claim that they work better than each other.

Since becoming parents, my husband and I decided that we wanted a “cleaner” cleaning environment for our home. A lot of common household cleaning products have cancer-causing ingredients, and with family members and friends who have had and are currently suffering from Cancer, we wanted to do our best at avoiding adding poisons to our bodies. We didn’t want our kidlets to be exposed to the “take your breath away” fumes that so many cleaners emit and we didn’t want to have these chemicals come in contact with our own skin, so we chose to use more “natural” products. We also wanted to reduce the chemicals that we were contributing to the environment. When choosing cleaners, we tend to go for the more “green” types, but they still had bleachy fumes and they really didn’t work that great. I was still using a lot of elbow grease to get the soap scum off the inside of the tub. Eventually, I think I’d end up with one HUGE arm like the guy in “Lady In the Water” by M. Night Shyamalan. I even switched to using the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Now, this little sponge-like scrubber was great! Again, a lot of elbow grease was used, but I didn’t need to use cleaners with it. Unfortunately, it left bits and pieces all over the place like a loose mouse in the house. Who wants to clean up again after they’ve already cleaned? And if my toddler found the bits first, then we’d be in for a surprise then next diaper change.

I had heard about Norwex through the Mommy Groups in my community and on Facebook and thought, this could be exactly what I’m looking for.

A little bit about Norwex:

We realized early on that household pollutants negatively impact our health and our environment. Most of the chemicals in cleaning and personal care products that people are exposed to every day have never been assessed for their impact on human health. Indoor air pollution is one of the top five highest ranking environmental health problems in America with chemical levels up to 70 times higher than outside. Research and information on the health effects of manufactured chemicals has not kept pace with their development and use.

In the last 50 years, the global production and use of manufactured chemicals has increased substantially. More than 80,000 new chemicals have been created.

Indoor air pollution is one of the top five highest-ranking environmental health problems in America.

Evidence shows homes have chemical levels up to 70 times higher than outside.

Most of the chemicals that people are exposed to every day have never been assessed for their impact on human health.

Parabens utilized in personal care for decades have been shown to have potential harmful effects.

What we do know is the harm chemicals have on humans is extensive. Most concerning are the growing links to chemicals that surround us in everyday life. They are linked to serious diseases such as birth defects, cancer and psychological abnormalities. Many today believe the extensive use of chemicals indoors contributes to many of our ‘modern’ diseases such as allergies and asthma.

Our mission at Norwex is to improve quality of life by radically reducing the use of chemicals in personal care and cleaning. In addition, the Norwex products make cleaning faster and more cost effective than traditional cleaning products.

I recently obtained several Norwex products to test out and I was actually gobsmacked at the awesomeness that these little beauties provide.

If I could give one word to the Envirocloth, it would be, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

This cloth cleaned my stovetop, my oil splattered cabinets, my microwave (inside and out, including the greasy vents for the hood fan), my 1970’s popcorn maker, and the top of our stacking washer/ dryer. I had to stop there because my kids were wondering where I was as I kept finding more things that I wanted to try it on. AND it is antibacterial!!! They have a silver agent woven into the fibres making it 99.9% antibacterial.

The Polishing cloth easily wiped away the awesome hand and face prints that don my mirrored closet doors and windows. All it required was some water and a good wipe and voila, shiny and streak-free.

The Baby cloth…I used this as a make-up remover cloth. Now, if you’ve ever hung out with me , you know that I can’t leave the house without “putting my face on”. This includes foundation, eyeliner and mascara. All awesome to remove without a little help. No match for the Baby cloth. No scrubbing, just wet the cloth, hold it on your eyes for a few seconds, then wipe away. Clean as a whistle.

The Odor Eliminator is by far my favourite. This splendiferous spray, tamed the most defiant beast known to man. The morning constitutional. A couple of spritzes and the washroom was once again safe to enter so I could put my face on.

The Laundry Detergent, left our clothes, bedding and towels smelling and feeling fresh without the use of fragrance and the awesome part, we only needed to use a tablespoon. And if you have a front loading washer, you only need a teaspoon!

The Dishwashing Liquid was a little less impressive for me. I found that I needed to use more than the current brand that I use, to get the greasy dishes clean. It did work great on the plastics, which I seem to have trouble with with my nemesis the dishwasher.

Overall, I was very impressed with the Norwex products that I test-drove. I look forward to trying more products out and seeing how they will replace my current “cleaning occupants”.

A friend provided me with a sample of the Sportzyme that I immediately handed off to my husband to spray down his hockey gear. If you have someone in your family that has hockey gear, you know that it smells like a combination of BO and a fish aquarium. The Sportzyme knocked out that stank and now the gear may reside in our home rather than the storage locker.

If you’d like to find out more about Norwex, please click here to find a consultant near you.

Tanya Davis Norwex Independent Sales Consultant has provided a sample package to giveaway to one lucky reader, valued at $47. Please click on the Rafflecopter link below to enter. Contest runs from February 17-23, 2014.

Not because I needed it, but because the tween magazines back then were very popular amongst the girls in my school and they contained “How-To’s” for putting on make-up and which colours suited your eyes, etc.

One of my best friends would always get the coolest gifts for her Birthday and Christmas, usually which consisted of a multi-colour make-up compact complete with everything required to put on a full face of make-up.

We would go in to the girls bathroom with her make-up and the tween magazines and try to re-create what we saw on the pages and for the most part (at least in our 11-12 year old minds) we looked good. What pre-pubescent boy wouldn’t take interest and want to sneak in a kiss behind the bushes after school?

Magazines from the 80’s.

This was my introduction in to the world of cosmetics.

Upon entering the institution of high school, I noticed that more girls were wearing make-up and had their hair done nicely. These were the popular girls. I wanted to be one of them. I would get up early everyday and make sure that my make-up was perfect and the not a strand of hair was out of place. It didn’t make me popular, but I felt that it kept me in the “neutral zone”, so that I wouldn’t get picked on. I still got picked on, but not because I was “ugly”, but because I was overweight.

Teenagers can be so cruel.

I remember being in grade 9 and a cute boy asked me to be his girlfriend. He was a nice guy and I really liked him. He would come to my school after class and wait by my locker for me. The popular girls couldn’t believe it and even tried to convince him that they’d be better off with them instead of me. He didn’t fall for it. I thank him for that to this day.

Jumping ahead a couple of years to grade 11, I was in an art class and the project that we were doing was to take plaster cast material and make a mask of our face to later paint. I was mortified and on the verge of tears. I would have to be make-upless in front of my classmates and one of the most popular guys, that picked on me, was in my class!!! After everyone started, I went up to my teacher, discretely, and expressed my fear. She sympathized with me and suggested that I come in before school started the following day and she would do it for me and I would have enough time to put my face back on before anyone saw me.

Great teacher!

If anyone asked me who my most memorable teacher was, I’d definitely have to say her because she was the most kind and helpful woman to me during my most trying years. This is also the teacher who suggested that I take a Make-up Artistry Program once I graduated. Which I did. Funny enough, I didn’t take the course because of fashion make-up, it was because I wanted to do the Special Effects Make-up. Now THAT is my passion.

So after completing the Make-up Program, I managed to get a few jobs, but they were VERY boring ones. Subsequently, this led to the demise of my Make-Up Artist career path. I did not want to work at a cosmetics counter.

Makeup Artist at work.

Jump ahead 19 years, and the idea of being a MUA gets rekindled. I have spent all these years perfecting MY look, so I am familiar with day make-up as well as evening looks. But cosmetics have come a long way since I finished school and the techniques and cosmetics themselves have evolved and I am standing here unfamiliar and overwhelmed. The investment in starting up a Make-up Artistry business is a pretty big one because there are so many different skin types and skin colours, that your kit would be massive to accommodate all your clients. I think for the time being, I’ll stick to being my own make-up artist.

Do you go au naturel or would you not be caught dead going out without “putting your face on”?